Linda McQuaig writes: "A 22-year-old prisoner at a US detention centre in Afghanistan died in December 2002 after being chained by his wrists to the top of his cell for four days and beaten until, according to the coroner, he resembled someone run over by a bus. During his interrogations, the prisoner cried 'Allah' whenever he was struck, which apparently amused his US interrogators and encouraged them to strike more. One later explained: 'Everybody heard him cry out and thought it was funny'....

"Accusing Washington of having become 'a leading purveyor and practitioner' of torture, Amnesty [International] called on Congress last week to appoint an independent commission.... But the death of this young Afghan taxi driver — who, it turns out, his interrogators believed to have been innocent — as well as more than 100 other detainee deaths and countless torture allegations at the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay prisons have failed to provoke any official investigation aimed at holding top people in the Bush administration to account."